Category: Assorted Links

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts9 Comments
  • More evidence that the SCD (Specific Carbohydrate Diet) diet really helps people with Crohn’s Disease. “Since starting this diet, I have had no pain. Some might attribute this to surgery, but I am convinced the diet has so much to do with it. My blood work is normal, and it hasn’t been in 8 years. The sed rate level in the blood is normal instead of elevated outrageously.”
  • How to improve on lectures when teaching physics.
  • More selenium, less risk of cancer. Contrary to what the researcher quoted in this article says, there is already substantial evidence that selenium reduces cancer risk. For example, in a county-by-county map of USA cancer rates, there is a clear rift in the north east. On one side of the rift rates are clearly higher than on the other side of the rift. The rift corresponds to geological fault line. On the low-cancer side of the rift, there is more selenium in the soil. There are also rat experiments. You certainly should take selenium supplements.
  • American health care plays a surprisingly large role in an excellent story by Peter Hessler in The New Yorker about the Japanese yakuza (mafia). 1. From 2000 to 2004, four yakuza members got liver transplants at UCLA at a time when liver transplants were hard to get. A few months later they made large donations to UCLA. The money went into a general fund at the surgery department. According to a UCLA spokesperson, there was no connection between the transplants and the donations. According to a UCLA press release, “No money or donation was offered or paid to anyone at UCLA as a quid pro quo for getting a transplant or moving up on the list.” Because a general fund is not a person, this is literally true. 2. In the early 1990s, at a Columbia, Missouri hospital, a nurse was suspected of killing patients. Hospital administrators covered it up. “Everyone took part in the coverup was promoted, everybody who tried to expose it was punished,” said someone who tried to expose it.

Thanks to Alex Chernavsky.

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts8 Comments

Thanks to Tim Beneke.

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts2 Comments

Thanks to Alex Chernavsky and Casey Manion.

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts1 Comment

Thanks to Hal Pashler, Dave Lull and Mike Bowerman.

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts2 Comments

Thanks to Robin Barooah and Mike Bowerman.

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts4 Comments
  • Harvard professors behaving badly: Alan Dershowitz. “In a phone interview Dershowitz denied writing to the Governor [of California], declaring, “My letter to the Governor doesn’t exist.” But when pressed on the issue, he said, “It was not a letter. It was a polite note.”” Dershowitz wrote the Governor of California to try to keep the University of California Press from publishing Beyond Chutzpah by Norman Finkelstein, which calls The Case for Israel by Dershowitz “among the most spectacular academic frauds ever published on the Israel-Palestine conflict”. Finkelstein’s book says nothing about whether Dershowitz actually wrote it. According to a statement from the UC Press, “[Finkelstein] wondered why Alan Dershowitz, in recorded appearances after [The Case For Israel] was published, seemed to know so little about the contents of his own book.”
  • Umami Burger takes Manhattan.
  • The trouble with measuring students on only one dimension: South Korea
  • Why do twins differ? Both twins have autism spectrum disorder, but one has the disorder much more than the other. Guess which one was “given powerful drugs to battle an infection”?

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts10 Comments
  • A brash high-school student discovers — maybe by accident — how much famous writers, such as Ralph Ellison, Norman Mailer, and John Updike, don’t want to write. Any excuse to avoid writing will do.
  • A pretty good talk by John Cochrane, a University of Chicago professor of economics, called “Restoring Robust Economic Growth in America”. What’s most interesting is what’s missing. At one point he asks: “Why are we stagnating? I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows, really. That’s why we’re here at this fascinating conference.” In spite of this topic, his talk contains nothing about what controls the rate of innovation. Not only does he not know anything about this (judging by this talk), he doesn’t even realize the gap in his knowledge (judging by this talk). Shades of Thomas Sargent. It’s as if a Harvard Medical School professor spoke about how to fight disease without mentioning the immune system, without even appearing to know that the immune system exists. (Which happens.)
  • Garum, a fermented fish sauce. It was the “supreme condiment” of ancient Rome.

Thanks to Allan Jackson and Peter Couvares.

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts5 Comments
  • Top ten excuses for climate scientists behaving badly. For example, “the emails are old” and “the timing is suspicious”.
  • Scientific retractions are increasing. My guess is that retractions are increasing because scientific work has become easier to check. Tools are cheaper, for example.
  • More Dutch scientific misconduct. “Professor Poldermans published more than 600 scientific papers in a wide range of journals, including JAMA and the New England Journal of Medicine.”
  • The next time someone praises “evidence-based medicine”, ask them: What about Accutane? It illustrates how evidence-based medicine encourages dangerous drugs. You can’t make lots of money from cheap, time-tested things that we know to be safe (such as dietary changes) so the drug industry revolves around things that are not time-tested and therefore dangerous — far more dangerous than dietary changes. Evidence-based medicine, which says that certain tests (expensive) are much better than other tests (cheap), provides cover for this. Because the required tests are so expensive, they are allowed to be short.

Thanks to Allan Jackson.

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts12 Comments
  • Super-old Ashkenazi Jews. Did they live to be more than a hundred “in spite of” their “bad habits” (eating steak & pork chops, smoking, refusal of Lipitor) or because of those habits? Small amounts of smoking could easily be beneficial due to (or illustrating) hormesis.
  • Does Hollywood have a sense of humor? In the new movie about noted anti-Communist J. Edgar Hoover, Hoover’s love interest is played by Armie Hammer, grandson of Armand Hammer, who worked for the Soviet Union as a money launderer. Edward Jay Epstein writes about Hammer and the Soviet Union in this excellent Kindle book.
  • An advantage of ebooks, not yet realized, is easy updates. When the book is improved — for example, mistakes fixed — you get a new copy. In an even better Kindle book, Epstein writes about the diamond industry. The vast difference between the purchase price of a diamond and its resale value may be the advertising industry’s greatest achievement. Recent events caused Epstein to add a new chapter. The book was easy for Epstein to update but unfortunately earlier purchasers did not get the new version.
  • Michel Cabanac, who did some of the research behind the Shangri-La Diet, has written a book about his life’s work: how we self-regulate via pleasure. During a meal, for example, exactly the same food becomes less pleasant. When it becomes unpleasant, we stop eating. When we are hot, cold water is more pleasant than when we are cold. The secret to weight loss, Cabanac realized, is making exactly the same food less pleasant — an insight few weight-loss writers understand.